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Collection development literature has burgeoned over the past decade, yet the complaint is still heard that college libraries are not engaged in meaningful collection development activities. College librarians often consider methods described in published research as too time‐consuming, technologically dependent, or statistically complex to apply to their own situations. How relevant is the literature to the practical needs of the collection developer? In addressing this question, a theoretical overview of collection development is presented, and recent publications reviewed, in terms of their relevance to collection planning, implementation, and evaluation in the small college library.

A little over a decade ago, a major library problem was formulated in arresting and witty terms. The growth of library collections, and the consequent pressure for growth of library buildings, was the subject of a conference of the Associated Colleges of the Midwest; and the conference, which proved to be seminal to the next decade of managerial thought, proclaimed that we were “Touching Bottom in the Bottomless Pit.” So we bade Farewell to Alexandria—that is, to the purported dream of all libraries, infinite expansion. In the same period the University Grants Committee of Great Britain was studying the same question. They, with the authority of the governmental voice, mandated a fixed size for British university libraries—a “no growth” policy. In the ensuring years, “no growth” has been a policy for some libraries, an uncomfortable physical fact for many others.

With the rise of alternate discovery services, such as Google Scholar, in conjunction with the increase in open access content, researchers have the option to bypass academic libraries when they search for and retrieve scholarly information. This state of affairs implies that academic libraries exist in competition with these alternate services and with the patrons who use them, and as a result, may be disintermediated from the scholarly information seeking and retrieval process. Drawing from decision and game theory, bounded rationality, information seeking theory, citation theory, and social computing theory, this study investigates how academic librarians are responding as competitors to changing scholarly information seeking and collecting practices. Bibliographic data was collected in 2010 from a systematic random sample of references on CiteULike.org and analyzed with three years of bibliometric data collected from Google Scholar. Findings suggest that although scholars may choose to bypass libraries when they seek scholarly information, academic libraries continue to provide a majority of scholarly documentation needs through open access and institutional repositories. Overall, the results indicate that academic librarians are playing the scholarly communication game competitively.

In the Spring 1989 semester, the Interdisciplinary Studies Department of Salem State College first offered New Technologies for Information Retrieval. This three‐credit course provides an introduction to automated searching tools available to students directly at home or indirectly through libraries and colleges. Database searching, CD‐ROM, interactive videodisks, bulletin boards, electronic mail, and online catalogs are among the technologies discussed. This article will elaborate on the rationale, goals, development, execution, and outcomes of the course, and relate them to current discussions on the importance of expanding “information literacy” for students.

As a beneficiary of what media, economic and political elites called “the longest economic expansion in the peacetime history of the United States”, George Bush was elected to the presidency in 1988. Less than a year later, as communism came apart at the seams, American political and economic pundits trumpeted the final triumph of laissez‐faire capitalism, and some even rushed to announce the “end of history”. The millenium had arrived.

As the First Lady, Michelle Obama stated that she had a number of priorities but that the first year would be mainly about supporting her two girls in their transitions to their new life in the White House. Her choice to be mom-in-chief drew unusually intense and rather puzzling, scrutiny. The chapter briefly discusses the range of reactions along the political spectrum as well as African-American feminists’ analyses of the stereotypes of Black women underlying those reactions. This analysis engages the debates from a different perspective. First, the chapter addresses the under-theorizing of the racialized gender norms embedded in the symbolism of the White House and the role of First Lady. It challenges the presumption of traditional notions of true womanhood and the incorrect conclusion that mothering would preclude public engagement.

Second and most importantly, this chapter argues that there are fundamental misunderstandings of what mothering meant for Michelle Obama as African-American woman. Cultural traditions and socio-historical conditions have led Black women, both relatives and non-kin, to form mothering relationships with others’ children and to appreciate the interdependence of “nurturing” one's own children, other children, and entire communities. Those practitioners whose nurturing activities encompassed commitment and contributions to the collectivity were referred to as community othermothering. Using primary sources, this chapter examines in detail Michelle Obama's socialization for and her practice of community othermothering in her role as First Lady. Attention is focused on her transformation of White House events by extending hospitality to more within Washington, DC, and the nation, plus broadening young people's exposure to inspiration, opportunities, and support for setting and accomplishing their dreams. Similarly, the concept of community othermothering is also used to explain Michelle Obama’s reinterpretation of the traditional First Lady's special project into the ambitious “Let's Move” initiative to end childhood obesity within a generation. The othermothering values and endeavors have helped establish the White House as “the People's House.”